


Front door

by SayNevermore



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 13:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3852268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SayNevermore/pseuds/SayNevermore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a guy on Steve's front door and he can't remember who he is. A soldier, a little boy, an old lover from another time. Maybe all at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Front door

**Author's Note:**

> This is a request for thoseweirdthings on tumblr based on the sentence "you lied to me". It was supposed to be a short thing but I went a little overboard and it's now 5 pages long so it's easier to post it here. I may change it a bit later to add things because I'm like that, I like to suffer.  
> There's spoilers of the end of CATWS, no other warning to do I think. I'm French, so it may be full of terrible mistakes, I apologize in advance.  
> Enjoy!

There is a guy on Steve’s front door.

Well it isn’t exactly his door anymore, to be honest he can’t even be sure it is still the same door or the same flat he once knew fifty years ago, but Steve has taken the habit to wander around his former address every once in a while and he still calls it home. The place has changed of course, he wasn’t expecting anything else. Not that he is disappointed in it; he isn’t, it’s just how things go right? Maybe the streets aren’t as flamboyant as they were in his memories but he isn’t coming back around there to find this kind of thrill, nor is he trying to find the old Brooklyn under the new one. Actually, it is quite refreshing to see the new face of the neighbourhood, to remind himself that he has left everything behind him. People. Places. Feelings.

But there is a guy sitting on his ancient front door and Steve isn’t fooled by the hood covering his hair or the beard invading his jaw, he isn’t fooled by the shadows under the pale, blue eyes that make the boy look like a junkie in search for a sugar daddy. 

“Bucky.” 

The name does not switch any light in the boy’s eyes but he does not stop looking at Steve either so the blond suppose he is getting accustomed to the name. 

It has been three months since Steve first went there again and it is the third time he finds a young ghost sitting on the stairs of his house. Every time he goes by his name. Every time Bucky looks at him with his pale and tired eyes and does not react. Steve is feeling like he is trying to feed a stray cat. The struggle is to fight the urge to go and grab him by the collar, to bring him to a doctor and then make him a little bed in his living room with an old blanket and a pillow. Bucky looks like he has lost 50 pounds in the last two months but the metal arm is still shining slightly in the small space between the sleeve of the hoodie and the leather glove he is wearing and Steve is pretty sure that, maybe Bucky can’t eat properly by himself anymore, but he could still fight him without blinking if he considered him a threat. He has been trained for that. This is not something you forget easily. 

So Steve stays at an acceptable distance of his old friend and just looks at him, calls him by his name, waits for a reaction, something that would let him know Bucky is coming back to the boy he was, with memories and confidence. He stays here a few minutes. Until his friend breaks eye contact and hides under his hood. The first time, Steve has tried to take a step in his direction when he wasn’t looking, but he has heard a growl coming from the boy and did not dare come any closer. Bucky will approach himself when he feels safe, he is sure of that. And if he never feels safe anymore, well… 

Maybe Steve can live with that, like he lived with his death. Maybe it will be harder, maybe it will need long nights staring at the ceiling and wondering how to save him, maybe he will never get over it. But he can live. He can live.

So he comes here every once in a while and there’s a guy sitting at his front door and he calls him, “Bucky”. And Bucky looks back and he looks terrible every time, not getting any better, and he doesn’t say anything.

Until one day, Steve stops by and calls him, and Bucky calls back.

“Steve.”

It is enough for the blond to feel his heart twist inside his chest. 

__________

Steve has said “Bucky” and Bucky said “Steve” and Steve answered “Yeah. You know me. Remember?” and Bucky had shrugged and pointed toward the street. “I see you passing by. Why do I know your name?”

He doesn’t know who “Bucky” is; he just accepts being called like that by Steve, and the blond has tried to make him react but nothing he could do or say has seemed to ring any bell in the former assassin’s shattered mind. 

He has seen the exposition about Captain America and the Howling Commandos, Steve learns by talking to him for a few minutes; but somehow he cannot associate himself with the guy on the videos with the same face as him. Steve can find Bucky under the beard and the dull skin but Bucky can’t find himself in the mirror. 

Bucky knows who Captain America is and knows a blond guy called Steve and somehow he knows who Steve is, but he doesn’t know why or how all of those figures are related. 

Steve talks to him for twenty minutes before Bucky starts to cross his arms on his chest and his answers to turn into incoherent mumbles. He promises he will come back, but he knows Bucky is already sure of that. 

The day after, he takes him to a fast-food and Bucky eats his burger in five bites, then looks at Steve’s fries but refuse them when Steve offers him some. Steve doesn’t know where to start so he just sends bottles to the sea, clues borrowed from his own memories. Sometimes, Bucky reacts, a surprising revelation pops up inside a sentence, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He says “I haven’t come here in ages” – but Steve knows he is remembering another place because they’ve never been here before – and “how is it now?” and “you’re still a fucking punk, Rogers”, so he knows years have passed, too many years, but he still can’t make the connections. It’s like putting pieces in a defective jukebox and getting a random collection of sentences instead of an entire song. 

They eat, they talk, they walk outside and talk again until the sun goes down. It’s a very painful conversation where the two parts don’t really answer to each other. Apparently Bucky has been staying in Brooklyn since their fight on the S.H.I.E.L.D.’s helicarrier, sleeping in streets and squats, stealing food out of delivery trucks. He’s used to hide and avoid trouble so he had stayed out of sight and only tried to find Steve again and collect the information he needs; the blond is surprised at how precisely he can repeat what he’s learned, like it’s just a file he can read any time. He can remember the exact words he’s read but he can’t remember why he always calls Steve a “punk” when Steve makes him laugh.

He laughs, and one second later he comes back to his usual tired and nervous face and glances behind him as if he was followed by someone and says “I have to go” and the last thing Steve sees is him crossing the street and disappearing. He finds him the day after, sitting on the stairs leading to his former house, calling him. They go on another walk like nothing happened.

Sometimes Bucky remembers what they’ve been saying last time, sometimes not. After explaining the same things four or five times, Steve considers making an explanatory video, 50-First-Dates-like. 

One day they’re walking and he tells Bucky: “I loved you.” 

He doesn’t get an answer.

One day they’re walking and he tells Bucky: “You loved me.”

“I know,” Bucky answers, then stares at the sky, hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

Steve feels his heart stop for a second. “You know?”

His friend looks at him from the corner of his eyes, raises a metallic hand to his chest and points at his heart like a child. “I can feel it sometimes. It’s warm. It helps me sleep.”

Steve doesn’t even know what to say. He pulled this card out of provocation, because everything else had been useless. He asks: “You still feel it?”

Bucky nods. “It’s my mind that’s shitty, Stevie, not my heart.”

Steve must look at him for too long, mouth open and eyes wild, because he starts to smile and punches him in the shoulder with his human hand, the one that doesn’t make him flinch. “What’s the matter? Never heard a boy talk about his feelings with you, Rogers?”

He grins, and Steve can’t answer because of course they’ve had long conversations about how they were feeling, of course they spent nights awake trying to figure out how to live like this, but how is he supposed to explain it to what remains of Bucky?

So he just laughs. Punches him back. “That’s just the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“You’re a punk.”

“Jerk.”

__________

There’s a guy on Steve’s frontdoor.

It’s his new flat, the one in the beautiful building that is watched over by at least three remaining of SHIELD’s agents pretending to be neighbours or just walking by to visit relatives, which makes this presence sitting on his doormat even more strange.

Bucky’s hands are gripping at his hair and his face is hidden between his knees. His shoes have left dirt marks everywhere around him, in a circular pattern, indicating that he’s spent too much time waiting here. Even more strange. 

“Buck?” Steve asks, and he sees a shiver shaking his friend’s back, but Bucky doesn’t raise his head to look at him. It takes Steve a few seconds to understand that he’s crying.

“Oh, Bucky, are you okay?” he asks, immediately falling on his knees to try to reach for his old friend.

Next thing he knows, he’s been raised up in one violent move and pinned face first against the wall, and there’s an arm pressing against his back, and a cold, steel hand reaching for his neck.

“You liar,” Bucky whispers against his ear. “Had fun, huh? Thought poor Buck couldn’t find out, with that fucked-up memory of him, right? Must have been hilarious playing with that… I know I would have found that funny…”

“What are you talking about? Buck? It’s me…”

“Oh, I know who you are, Steve Rogers. Which is precisely why I’m here.”

The hand on his neck tightens its grip. He can still breathe, but can’t make a move or he’ll have his spine snapped by metal. And where is SHIELD when he really needs it?

“It’s a really nice house you have there,” Bucky continues. “Nice bodyguards, too. Apparently they didn’t expect anything to happen to you, though… surprise has been enough. Well, I’m surprised, actually. Aren’t you like, the saviour of humanity?”

“What do you want?” Steve asks dryly, thoughts going red at the thought of three people unconscious somewhere – or worse. 

“You lied to me,” Bucky hisses, “you played the kind, charming boyfriend so you could gain more time or whatever reason you had, thinking I wouldn’t remember…”

“I didn’t…”

“We’ve never been friends. We only met once. And I failed to kill you that time but it’s not gonna happen again.”

Steve feels his stomach sink. As the corridor goes silent, he can’t formulate a single thought, his mind swallowed up by the sudden feeling he cadn’t even describe. The kind of emptiness he felt when his mother died, when he decided to crash a plane in ice, when he let his friend beat him to death on that hellicarrier. Of course, this couldn’t possibly end happily. What was he even thinking again?

But as seconds pass, and nothing happens, not a sound, not a move, he finds himself lightened by a tiny flame, something so small he can barely notice it – hope.

“Go on, then,” he says flatly. “What are you waiting for?”

“Huh?” Bucky asks, surprised.

“If you’re gonna kill me, at least make it quick. You’ve been trained for that, right? You remember that. But you want to know if I lied, first, right?”

“I know you lied,” Bucky answers, but his voice in’t as threatening as it was one second ago and Steve rushes into the weakness. 

“You have no idea, because you can’t remember a damn thing. And it feels too real to have been invented, right? Because it was. And somehow you know it is, but you can’t access the part of your brain where these memories are kept…”

“Shut up…”

Not threatening at all.

“But if you want to be sure you could let me look at you and tell you everything, right? And you’ll see I didn’t lie to you, Buck. I would never.”

There is a few seconds of silence and immobility again. Then, the pressure on his back disappears, and a determined hand turns him around, the metallic one only sliding against his neck, not removing itself one second. 

“Lie to me again and you’re going to die atrociously slowly, Rogers,” Bucky announces with the kind of voice he was usually using to tell him to watch out when crossing the streets. Steve keeps himself from smiling. Not now.

But he reaches for Bucky’s face and kisses him without hesitation.

Of course it doesn’t happen as smoothly and perfectly as he could have hoped. Bucky tenses, tries to push him away, and he ends up biting him in a desperate attempt to keep him close. The sad, blue eyes are fuelled with anger, the pale lips opened to spit out something, but Steve is still faster to react.

“I love you, Buck.”

Bucky instantly stops moving. They stare at each other for a long, terrible second. Bucky’s hands fall off at his sides.

“Say again?” he asks, checking Steve’s face, probably in search of anything that could betray him.

“I love you,” Steve says. 

“I… love you too?” Bucky answers after a few seconds, visibly concerned. “I… don’t know, it’s just… the first thing that… I’m supposed to hate you…”

“No you don’t. We’re friends.”

“You’re a name on a sheet of paper to me, Rogers.”

“But I haven’t always been. Remember?”

The boy shake his head. Of course he doesn’t. Right now he is the Winter Soldier again, confused, brainwashed little boy with precise orders and no place for feelings.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to start again, right?”

“Again? Why, again?”

“Buck, I’ve been doing that for the past two months. Repeating the same things until you accept them.” 

Bucky’s brows furrow.

“Have I… How many times have I threatened to kill you exactly?”

Steve chuckles. “This is the first, and I hope the last. You’re usually much more cooperative. By the way, what did you do to the…”

“Nothing,” Bucky answers immediately. “Trapped them. They’ll come back in a hurry when they find out I’ve had them wandering outside searching for a non-existent threat, so maybe I should…”

“No. It’s alright, you can stay here. So you didn’t fight anyone?”

Bucky rolls his eyes, crossing his arms against his chest. The Winter Soldier disappears instantly, replaced by a different man, from a different era. Terribly familiar, though.

“You think I’m an idiot? They didn’t even see me. I know how to be discreet, what do you imagine? I thought you were like a tactical genius?”

“I’m usually the guy who runs through enemy lines and tries not to be shot.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“How the fuck did you even survive long enough to become my target?”

“Well, believe it or not, but you always had my back.”

“Sure I had. There’s no way you could have survived alone, punk.”

“See, already coming back to yourself, jerk.”

“And are you gonna open that goddamn door or what?”

Steve laughs, surprised. “Okay, captain.”

He turns around to unlock the door and no cold hand goes to strangle him. He enters first, turning at Bucky to show him everything is fine, and watches him follow with careful steps.

“Welcome home,” Steve whispers, finally smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also at http://mywallsarestronger.tumblr.com/ ! You can come here and leave me an ask if you want me to write something for you <3


End file.
